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After three years of intense focus on therapy and personal growth, I'm finally hitting the keys again and will be jumping into NaNoWriMo on November 1st, 2016. Stay tuned for updates!

Tuesday, 15 January 2013

SKY PILOT - Eric Burdon & The Animals

Wow! Where did Monday go?! I really wanted to have this post done by
this morning. *Sigh* One of these
weeks...

Anyhoo,
here we go!

This
week, my theft is more direct.
Previously, I think they have been all inspirational, but this week, I’m
stealing: straight out.

I was
driving home from St. Catharines on Sunday evening with Q107 cranked in the car
and a song I haven’t heard in quite a while came on the radio. I listened and was overjoyed because it fit
perfectly into the show that is currently ruminating in my mind called Eve of Destruction. The song: Sky
Pilot by Eric Burdon & The Animals.

Now,
when I write shows, by the time they actually get put onto the computer, I’ve
spent a lot of time with it. My Mother’s Daughters: I’ve been
thinking about and it has been growing in my mind for the past 7 years. Only now has it started taking enough shape
to actually come out.

Eve of Destruction is like that.
The premise: it is a musical that uses existing songs to tell the story
of a country that begins a war for profit and how the media manipulates the
population to support the war and the effects of the war after it begins. Over the years, I have been compiling songs
that I would like to use and my thought is that when I have all the songs I
need to tell the story, I will be able to write the show. (It’s been a slow
going process and it is not often I find a song that pops out.)

This
weekend I added one more. When it comes time
to do the show, I know that I will have to see if I can get the rights to use
the songs, or I may have a composing partner by then and we may write our own
music. Either way, the songs on my list
help me tell the story and give the plot shape and arc in my mind. Also, there are things about the rhythms of
the song that produce the feel I want on stage and I can actually see some of
the choreography in my mind.

Sky Pilot has given me another character for the show:
The military chaplain; a man in conflict about the current war. His duty is to the soldiers and his country,
but he sees a land that is being ravaged by war that is full of regular people
and he empathizes with them. He sees the
boys he lives with, knows and cares for go out each day, many to face their
death and wonders if it is really worth it?
He is a juicy addition to my story and will relate well to the main
character (the soldier that falls in love with a local girl and is being forced
to hunt down her brothers) and can even be a friend to the Unknown Soldier (the
narrator).

It is
hard to come up with all the characters you need to tell a well-rounded fully developed
story. It’s always great when something
comes along and you can say: YES!!! THAT’S
IT!!!! And suddenly, there you are; a
whole new person in your story and that person brings with them their own plot
and fills in some of the blanks that have been plaguing the process. It’s like magic. You realize: Oh! That’s how this happens, this person comes
along and does it! That’s what this
chaplain is for me. I have the last
scene in Eve of Destruciton written,
but I had no idea how to get my characters to that place or what it was that
made the scene occur, but now, with the chaplain, it has all become clear in my
mind and I can now see the last half of Act 2 clearly in my head. It’s awesome.
It is like a fog lifting over the city and you can see the place you
have been searching for is right in front of you.

If Sky Pilot does get used in the show, I
think it would be split up (much like it was on the original album release) and
used as a reprise later. The lyrics are
really what struck me. It perfectly
encapsulates the feelings of the chaplain (since the song inspired the
character, I guess that shouldn’t be a surprise). The part that stands out is:

May God give you strength

Do your job real well

If it all was worth it

Only time it will tell

“Is it
worth it?” is one of the main theme through the show. What is the cost of war? Is the price really worth the reward? Who sees the reward? Do the people who pay the price truly know
what they are paying for? Is there
another way?

War is a
subject that is extremely close to my heart.
The theory that war is necessary in some cases is one that I can
understand and even support, but there is always something in the back of my
mind that says: was it? When you look at
World War II: yes, that war was necessary.
There was injustice being done and we had to fight to stop it. We can say: we didn’t start it, bad things we
happening and we had to make them stop and violence was the only way to stop
violence. If someone is beating you with
a stick, find bigger people to beat them with a bigger stick and they will
stop. Makes sense, but still, you have
to wonder; where were those people with the bigger stick before you started
getting beaten? How could this war have
been prevented? Did we do all we could
to make sure it didn’t happen? Or did we
sit there and think to ourselves, well, at least it’s not us?

Also, it
is important to remember the people who are on the ground fighting our
wars. Almost never is it the people who
started the war that you find in the trenches.
They are not the ones with their lives at risk. To them, they get reports with numbers:
statistics. They don’t see the faces of
each of the soldiers that give up their lives for their country. Eve of
Destruction looks at those people.
Who are the people on the ground?
What do they face? They are not
nameless. They have family and friends
who love and care about them. They laugh
and cry and are afraid before heading out on a mission. They suffer unimaginable horrors. For me, it is important to show that side of
war as well. The fact is that war is
still fought by human beings. As someone
without family or friends in active military service, it can be hard to
remember the people on the ground when you see news reports or read articles
about some of the conflicts happening around the world. I often fall into the “at least it’s not us”
group. As a writer, it is my
responsibility to find a way to say, this is not okay. To do my part to stop being part of that
group and say: it is all us! I cannot be
free from oppression if there are others who are not free from oppression.

So, stay
tuned for Eve of Destruction. It is still a few years away from hitting the
stage, but it’s getting bigger in my mind.
Soon, it will be ready to burst forth like Athena from my head.

MORE FROM ART THIEF

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Welcome to Art Thief!

After a few failed attempts at creating "themed story" blogs, I have been inspired to create a blog with the true intention of the format: a simple web log of my inspirations as a writer and artist.

This blog is dedicated to Austin Kleon, whose book Steal Like an Artist, has been my primary inspiration.

In this book, Kleon discusses how all art is stolen in some way and a good artist knows what is worth stealing. As artists, we cannot fool ourselves into thinking that everything we create is original. We all draw our inspiration from many sources and we steal little gems from each one to develop our own body of work. Kleon's book outlines simple practices to ensure that you keep your art alive; one being: SHARE YOUR WORK.

Thief Profile

Good thieves never reveal their identity... although, good thieves don't likely advertise their plunders to the rest of the world either.

Art Thief, aka AJ, keeps her home in Toronto, Canada; though work often pulls her to every corner of the globe.

AJ is a writer and teacher disguised as a mild mannered stage manager. She loves working in theatre and being able to surround herself with some of the best artists in the industry (while plotting to take over the world with her own work). As a stage manager, AJ is constantly immersed in all forms of art. Talk about inspiration overload! The number of stories and characters that fill each day is more than any writer could ask. The goal now: keep up!

AJ is working on a lot of projects in 2013, including: the first full length run of her play, Empty Boxes; and the launch of Homestead Theatre Project. Stay tuned in the Happenings section of this blog for details.